Conventional wall heaters typically are of the type in which a burner assembly is into a recess or space in a wall to heat the air in the space. The front boundary of this is covered by a front panel, usually of metal, provided with a number of spaced, generally horizontal slots. The heated air in the space rises by convection and eventually flows out of the space through the slots and into the adjacent room.
A major disadvantage of the wall heater of this type is that considerable time is required to heat the room because of the relatively slow movement of heated air by convection out of the space occupied by the wall heater. Thus, a considerable amount of time and a considerable amount of fuel, such as natural gas or oil, are expended to heat the room because the volume rate of flow of air out of the wall heater space through the slots of the front panel is relatively low.
Wall heaters of this type have generally been described in the following U.S. Patents:
______________________________________ 1,645,140 2,834.279 1,875,683 3,295,749 2,528,650 3,358,675 2,679,202 3,384,070 2,733,704 3,394,696 ______________________________________
None of the foregoing shows or suggests a simple way of increasing the volume rate of flow of heated air from a wall heater of the type described without incorporating a blower within the wall heater space. Specifically, none of the patents shows a device which can be quickly and easily mounted externally on a wall heater to accomplish this purpose. For this reason, and in view of fuel shortages now experienced in many places throughout the world, a need has arisen for an improved apparatus for use externally of a wall heater and one which is capable of increasing the volume rate of flow of heated air from a wall heater to heat up a room adjacent to the wall heater more quickly while at the same time conserving fuel and thereby minimizing the energy required to accomplish this purpose.